Subversive Jesus: An Adventure in Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness in a Broken World

by Craig Warren Greenfield

We need to see theological ideas in messy human form so they can spark something real in our imagination. We need to see other people screw up so we can laugh or weep and imagine that we might dare to risk failure too.

Writer and activist Shane Claiborne once wrote, “Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived.”

I have found that if I pray for God to move a mountain, I must be prepared to wake up next to a shovel.

My friend Joyce Rees says that if you want to understand the good news that Jesus offers for the poor in a particular place, you first have to discover what the bad news looks like.

So when people ask me whether I preach the gospel to the poor, I echo the words of St. Francis: “It is no use walking anywhere to preach, unless our walking is our preaching.”

Lilla Watson, an aboriginal activist in Australia, confronted the hordes of do-gooders who came to serve and help her people by saying, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together.”

Though our initial engagement with the poor might begin with a short-term mission trip, it must not end there, because Jesus himself was known as a friend of the broken—not just a visitor. Our lives must develop an ongoing rhythm of interacting with and embracing those who are struggling.

As Christians, we have become so fixated on our roles as servants that we miss out on the relationships of mutuality that the Spirit wants to knit between people.